What if We Get it Right?
I heard an inspiring interview of Ayana Elizabeth Wright, a marine biologist who teaches at Bowdoin College, on PBS this week. Dr. Wright wrote a book What if We Get it Right? This book presents an optimistic approach to addressing climate change. Dr. Wright believes there many opportunities available to individuals to protect the environment and that we can pursue them with joyful effervescence. We already have solutions to climate change. We know how to reduce the production of carbon generated by agricultural businesses, manufacturing, transportation, and building. We know public transit, bike lanes, regenerative agriculture, high speed trains, composting, protecting and restoring eco-systems, clean and renewable energy, and green building can halt the environmental degradation, help us adapt to the damages done, and develop the resiliency required to live in hotter and drier climates, with rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, and less species diversity. We have solutions. The problem is our implementation of solutions is not at the pace needed and political will is wanting. Political will is wanting in lots of people, not just elected officials. Leaders of corporations and ordinary people like you and me suffer from a failure of will. We lie to ourselves thinking what we do won’t make a difference. Some political and business leaders who deny climate change and the impact of their products or industries on the climate are lying in order to be elected or protect profits. We lie to ourselves: recycling does not help, driving is better and safer than public transportation or carpools, reusable bags are just another form of waste). Our lies are different in scale, but no different in character than those told by elected officials, captains of industry or corporations.
Lack of will and poor implementation are bad stewardship. Dr. Wright said we need gumption. We need to use our time, talents and treasures with joy and effervescence. Stewardship of the earth that gets it right, stewardship with gumption, includes accepting climate change is real, managing the environment and implementing solutions. Individuals have so many options. Option that can replace despair with joy and fear with love. All we need is some gumption.
The Book Esther chronicles degradation and gumption. It is one of the shorter books in the Bible and its narrative style makes it to understand. I heartily commend it to your reading. The environmental degradation described in Esther is cultural rather than natural. The gumption described offers guidance for stewardship we can apply to any threatening situation. In this book, Hamon, a self-serving leader, pollutes the king’s perceptions, erodes the civility, fosters defensiveness and foments hatred. Hamon’s actions so degrade of the culture of the region that the entire population shifts from peaceful coexistence to planning the extermination of residents whose ethnicity and religion differ from Hamon’s. This narrative bears an eery resemblance to what is taking place between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hezbollah. King Ahasuerus "ruled over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia.” Mordecai and Hamon were members of the king’s cabinet. The king had a falling out with Queen Vashti because she address the king during a public occasion without first securing his permission. So Ahasuerus beheaded Queen Vashti. The king did want to be without a queen so beautiful females (single and married) were rounded up from all the provinces and placed in the king’s haram. They received beauty treatments, expensive clothing, wonderful food and glorious accommodations and waited to be summoned to the king’s bed chamber. Esther, Mordecai’s niece, was among these females. Mordecai raised her as his child after the death of her parents and continued to advise her after she was taken into the haram. When it was Esther turn to go the King Ahasuerus he deemed her the most beautiful and pleasurable of all the females and made her queen. The other females were retained as concubines.
During this time, Mordecai uncovered and stopped an assassination attempt on the king. The king honored Mordecai for his actions. This enraged Hamon. Because Hamon could not attack the heroic Mordecai directly, he denigrated the people who shared Mordecai’s ethnicity and religion. He claimed Jews were a danger to the king and threatened the peace and prosperity of the kingdom. He convinced the king and courtiers to make a decree to rid every province. That order required the execution of every Jew and directed residents to claim their property and businesses for themselves. Mordecai went into mourning and spoke out against the decree. He also informed Esther of the impending disaster and urged her to respond:
Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this. Esther 4:13b-14
Mordecai was advised Esther to have some gumption. The passage assigned for reading today describes Esther’s gumption stewardship. She uses her talent, time and treasures to host a series of lavish dinner parties for king where Hamon is a guest. The king is so pleased that he promised to reward Esther with anything she asks up to half of his kingdom. Esther then used the king’s offer to asks for her life and the life of her people. The king was outraged that his beautiful, adoring, compliant and gracious queen was being threatened. King Ahasuerus asked for the name of the one who would do this. Esther told him that Hamon was the culprit. The king responded by hanging Hamon on the gallows he had erected for Mordecai and withdraws the extermination decree.
Esther showed gumption. Each year our Jewish brothers and sisters remember Esther’s gumption by celebrating God’s willingness and ability to save those who believe.
If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel now say; …the waters would (sic) have overwhelmed us and the torrent gone over us, …but (sic) our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 133: 4 & 8
Esther had gumption. She used her time, talents and treasure to do what was within her power to save herself, her family, and her people. Esther trusted in God and God was with her. God is with you. Will you, like Esther, make use of the time, talents and treasures at your disposal to acknowledge the reality of climate change and implement some of the many solutions available to you.
Dr. Wright, in that interview, suggests stewardship with gumption attends to three questions: (1) What am I good at? (2) What work needs doing? and (3) What brings me joy? Does writing to elected officials light you up? Do that. Does walks on the beach bring you closer to God? Do what I do, take a container with you to collect trash as you walk. Does putting things in order give you peace? Take it from me, sorting trash and carrying items to a recycling center, donating clothing you have not worn in a year, and composting are excellent outlets for obsessive compulsive tendencies. Just as Esther’s gumption saved her people, our gumption can save this plant earth our fragile island home.
